Tuesday, January 6, 2015

ArmA 3 - Fighting in Woods

So intense was my longing of real life hardware that I broke my rule of not patching. I installed Red Hammer Studios' Escalation and geez it was worth every megabit of it.

Armed with a virtual reality that has recovered a big chunk of reality, I went out to a wooded area in Altis to try out something I heard during the weekend at the airsoft field.

I don't know how familiar are you guys with airsoft. It's a game played with toy replicas that fire plastic bbs up to 400 feet per second. Depending on who you play with, you get a different experience. In all the arenas my son and me visit, we get a healthy mix of young kids, college students and a few oldies like me.

I get it, it is not real warfare. But what beats running with realistic-looking guns, dressed in BDUs, hunting down other people and bonding with your kid?

One gentleman I spoke with at the airsoft field mentioned to me a movement tactic he uses to great effect. The specific name for that tactic escapes me right now. But it was something like "put trees between you and the bad guy".

Before contact, you put that tree trunk between you and the most likely enemy's avenue of approach. In this case that avenue is extending to my left and I am checking my right flank. This is just a typical use of defile if we assume the enemy will be advancing at my left.

Immediately after contact (note the enemy rounds landing nearby) I move laterally to put the tree trunk between me and an enemy LMG. A big boulder is a great bonus, but don't count on that to happen every single time.

Suspicious about the number of enemies out there, I decide to pull out. I am withdrawing under pressure and I have two trees between me and the enemy. The first tree is just in front of me, the second one is the one with the boulder (the one I just got out from).

I am surprised that I consistently survived and withdrew facing an enemy LMG. The enemy rounds lifted enough bark to build a small house, yet I was not overly suppressed at any time.

Just for the record, most of the equipment in Arma 3 already exists today, it's not all that futuristic. A great reference of what real world weapons the ones in Arma 3 are based on can be found here: Link

But of course, this equipment is not what is deployed by the US or other militaries today, and the RHS Escalation mod is really awesome. I've been using it for a couple of months now, and it's perfect if you want some more contemporary equipment than what you find in Arma 3 vanilla.

I dork around quite a bit with the in-house content, but seeing the amount of work these dudes are putting in, plus MCC sandbox, TPW, ASRI, JSRS - sound, I mean, it really just changes everything for me.